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BOOKS BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
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+THE ONE I KNEW THE BEST OF ALL.+ Illustrated.
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THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
_author of "That Lass o' Lowrie's," "Haworth's," "Louisiana," "A Fair
Barbarian," etc., etc._
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1881 and 1883,
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
_All rights reserved._
[Illustration: Logo]
THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION.
CHAPTER I.
Eight years before the Administration rendered important by the series
of events and incidents which form the present story, there had come to
Washington, on a farewell visit to a distant relative with whom he was
rather a favorite, a young officer who was on the point of leaving the
civilized world for a far-away Western military station. The name of the
young officer was Philip Tredennis. His relative and entertainer was a
certain well-known entomologist, whom it will be safe to call Professor
Herrick. At the Smithsonian and in all scientific circles, Professor
Herrick's name was a familiar one. He was considered an enviable as well
as an able man. He had established himself in Washington because he
found men there whose tastes and pursuits were congenial with his own,
and because the softness of the climate suited him; he was rich enough
to be free from all anxiety and to enjoy the delightful liberty of
pursuing his scientific labors because they were his pleasure, and not
because he was dependent upon their results. He had a quiet and charming
home, an excellent matter-of-fact wife, and one daughter, who was being
educated in a northern city, and who was said to be as bright and
attractive as one could wish a young creature to be.
Of this daughter Tredennis had known very little, except that she
enjoyed an existence and came home at long intervals for the holidays,
when it did not happen that she was sent to the sea or the mountains
with her mother instead.
The professor himself seemed to know but little of her. He was a quiet
and intensely studious person, taking small interest in the ordinary
world and appearing always slightly surprised when his wife spoke to
him; still, his manner toward her was as gentle and painstaking as if
she had been the rarest possible beetle, and the only one of her species
to be found in any known collection, though perhaps the interest she
awakened in him was not so great as it might have been under such
exceptionally favorable circumstances. She was not a brilliant or
far-seeing woman, and her opinions of entomology and, indeed, of science
in general, were vague, and obscured by objections to small boxes, glass
cases, long pins, and chloroform, and specimens of all orders.
So, observing this, Tredennis felt it not at all unnatural that he
should not hear much of his daughter from the professor. Why his
relative liked him the young man was not at all sure, though at times he
had felt the only solution of the mystery to be that he liked him
because his tendency was toward silence and books and research of all
kinds. He thought he was certain that the professor did like him. He had
invited him to visit him in Washington, and had taken him to the
Smithsonian, and rambled from room to room with him, bestowing upon him
tomes of information in the simplest and most natural manner; filled
with the quietest interest himself and entirely prepared to find his
feeling shared by his charge. He had given into his hands the most
treasured volumes in his library, and had even seemed pleased to have
him seated near him when he sat at work. At all events, it was an
established fact that a friendly feeling existed between them, and that
if it had been his habit to refer to his daughter, he would have spoken
of her to Tredennis. But Tredennis heard nothing of her until he had
been some days in Washington, and then it was Mrs. Herrick who spoke of
her.
"Nathan," she said one evening at dinner, "Bertha will be home on
Tuesday."
The professor laid his spoon down as if he had rather unexpectedly
discovered that he had had enough soup.
"Bertha," he said. "Indeed! Next Tuesday. Well, of course, we must be
ready for her. Do you want any money, my dear? But, of course, you will
want money when she comes, if she has finished school, as I think you
said she had."
"I shall want money to pay her bills," answered Mrs. Herrick. "She will
bring them with her. Her aunt has had her things made in New York."
"Yes," said the professor, "I dare say they will be more satisfactory.
What kind of things, for instance, Catherine?"
"Dresses," replied Mrs. Herrick, "and things of that sort. You know she
is to come out this season."
"To come out," remarked the professor, carefully giving the matter his
undivided attention. "I hope she will enjoy it. What sort of a ceremony
is it? And after a young person has 'come out' does she ever go in, and
is there any particular pageant attached to such a--a contingency?"
"When she comes out," answered Mrs. Herrick, taking a purely practical
view of the affair, "she begins to go to parties, to balls, and
receptions, and lunches; which she does not do when she is going to
schools. It isn't considered proper, and it wouldn't give her any time
for her studies. Bertha hasn't been allowed to go out at all. Her aunt
Maria has been very particular about it, and she will enjoy things all
the more because they are quite new to her. I dare say she will be very
gay this winter. Washington is a very good place for a girl to come out
in."
After dinner, when they retired to the library together, it occurred to
Tredennis that the professor was bestowing some thought upon his
paternal position, and his first observation proved that this was the
case.
"It is a most wonderful thing that a few brief years should make such
changes," he said. "It seems impossible that so short a time should
change a small and exceedingly red infant into a young person returned
from school in the most complete condition, and ready to 'come out.' She
was not interesting as an infant. I tried to find her so, but failed,
though it was insisted that she was an unusually intelligent baby, and I
have not seen much of her of late years. When she was growing it was
thought that the climate of Washington was not good for her. I am really
a little curious about her. My views of girls are extremely undefined. I
have always been a bookworm. I have not known girls. They have not come
within my radius. I remember one I once knew years ago, but that is all.
It was when I was a younger man. I think she was a year or so older than
Bertha. She was very interesting--as a study. She used to bewilder me."
He walked over to the table, and began to turn over some papers.
"She had gray eyes," he said, in a rather lower voice,--"gray eyes."
He was so quiet for some time that Tredennis thought he had forgotten
what he had been talking about; but, after a pause of at least three
minutes, he spoke again.
"I would not be at all sorry," he said, "if Bertha was a little like
her. I suppose," he added,--referring seriously to Tredennis,--"I
suppose they are all more or less alike."
"I think"--faltered Tredennis, "perhaps so."
He did not feel himself an authority. The professor stood still a
moment, regarding the fire abstractly.
"_She_ had gray eyes," he said again,--"gray eyes!" and immediately
afterward returned to his table, seated himself, and fell to work.
The next week Bertha arrived, and to her distant relative her arrival
was a revelation. She descended upon the quiet household--with her
trunks, her delight in their contents, her anticipation of her first
season, her fresh and rather surprised exultation in her own small
powers and charms, which were just revealing themselves to her--like a
young whirlwind. Her mother awakened to a most maternal interest in the
gayeties into which she was to be drawn; the very servants were absorbed
in the all-pervading excitement, which at length penetrated to the
professor's study itself, and aroused him from his entomological
reveries.
After she had been in the house a week, he began to examine the girl
through his spectacles with great care and deliberation, and, having
cheerfully submitted to this inspection through several meals, one day
at dinner its object expressed herself with charming directness
concerning it.
"I do hope you'll like me, papa," she said, "when you have classified
me."
"Classified you!" said the professor, in some bewilderment.
"Yes," answered Bertha. "You know I always feel as if you might turn me
over gently with your finger at any moment, and watch me carefully while
I struggled until you knew all about me, and then chloroform me and
stick a pin through me with a label on it. I shouldn't like the
chloroform and the pin, but I should take an interest in the label.
Couldn't I have the label without the pin, papa?"
"I don't know," said the professor, examining her more carefully than
ever. "I am afraid not."
After that it became his custom to encourage her to reveal herself in
conversation, which it was very easy to do, as she was a recklessly
candid young person, given to the most delightfully illogical
partisanship, an endless variety of romantic fancies, and a vivid
representation of all facts in which she felt interest. It must be
confessed that, for the sake of hearing her talk, the professor
somewhat neglected, for the time being, both _Coleoptera_ and
_Lepidoptera_, and, drifting into the sitting-room upon many sunny
mornings, allowed himself to be surrounded by innocent frivolities in
the way of personal adornments. And it must also be added that he fell
into the habit of talking of the girl to Tredennis, as they sat together
by the study fire at night.
"She is an attractive girl," he said once, seriously. "I find myself
quite absorbed in her at times. She is chaotic, illogical,
unpractical--oftener than not she does not know anything of what she is
talking about, but her very absurdities have a kind of cleverness in
them. And wit--there is wit in her nonsense, though she is scarcely
conscious of it. I cannot help thinking of her future, and what its
needs will develop in her. It all depends upon the needs. You never know
what will be developed, but you know it depends upon the needs."
"I--hope there will be no painful needs," said Tredennis, looking at the
fire. "She is very happy. I never saw any one so happy."
"Yes, she's very happy," admitted the professor. "At present she is not
much more than a joyous, perfectly healthy young animal. She sings and
laughs because she can't help it, and she adorns herself from instinct.
She'll be different in a year or two. She'll be less happy, but more
interesting."
"More interesting!" said Tredennis, in a low voice.
"Yes, more interesting," answered the professor, looking at the fire
himself, with an air of abstractedly following a train of thought. "She
will have made discoveries about herself. It is a pity she can't make
them without being less happy--but then, none of us are happy." He
paused, rubbed his forehead a second, and then turned suddenly on
Tredennis.
"Are _you_ happy?" he demanded.
Tredennis started and hesitated.
"Y-yes--n-no," he answered, unsteadily. He would have said yes
unreservedly a short time ago; but within the last few days he had been
less sure of himself, and now, being confronted with the question
unexpectedly, he found that he must answer with a reservation--though he
could not at all have given a reason for the feeling that he must do so.
"Perhaps it is not my way to look at life brightly," he added.
"It is her way," said the professor. "She believes in everything in a
persistent, childish fashion that is touching to older persons like
myself. If you contest her points of belief with her she is simply
obstinate. You can't move her."
"Why should any one try?" said Tredennis, warmly.
"There is no need to try," responded the professor. "She will find out
for herself."
"Why should she?" said Tredennis, warmer still. "I hope she won't."
The professor took off his spectacles and began to polish them carefully
with a corner of his large white handkerchief.
"She is going to be a clever woman," he said. "For her sake I am sorry
to see it. She is going to be the kind of clever woman who has nine
chances out of ten of being a desperate pain to herself while she is a
pleasure to her friends. She hasn't the nature to find safety in
cleverness. She has a conscience and emotions, and they will go against
her."
"Against her?" cried Tredennis.
"She will make mistakes and suffer for them--instead of letting others
suffer. She won't be a saint, but she might be a martyr. It always
struck me that it took faults and follies to make a martyr."
He bent forward and poked the fire as carefully as he had rubbed his
spectacles; then he turned to Tredennis again--slowly this time, instead
of suddenly.
"You resent it all, I suppose," he said. "Of course you do. It makes you
angry, I've no doubt. It would have made me angry, I dare say, at your
age, to hear an elderly scientist dissect a pretty young creature and
take the bloom off her life for her. It's natural."
"I don't like to think of her as--as being anything but happy--and--and
good," said Tredennis, with some secret resentment.
"She'll not be bad," said the professor, critically. "It isn't in her.
She might be happy, perhaps--if one thing happened to her."
"What one thing?" asked Tredennis.
"_If_ she married a fine fellow, whom she was deeply and passionately in
love with--which happens to very few women."
In the shadow of his corner Tredennis felt the hot blood mount steadily
to his forehead, and was glad of the dim light, for the professor was
still regarding him fixedly, though as if in abstraction.
"She will be--likely to marry the man she loves, sir," he said, in a
voice neither clear nor steady.
"Yes," said the professor; "unless she makes the mistake of merely
marrying the man who loves _her_. She will meet him often enough. And,
if he chances some day to be a fascinating fellow, her fate will be
sealed. That goes along with the rest of her strengths and weaknesses."
And he gave the fire a vigorous poke, which cast a glow of light upon
them both; then, leaving his chair, he stood for a moment polishing his
glasses,--staring absently at Tredennis before he put them on,--and
wandered back to his table and his specimens.
Tredennis' own acquaintance with his young relative was not a very
intimate one. Too many interests presented themselves on every side to
allow of her devoting herself specially to any one, and her father's
favorite scarcely took the form of an interest. She had not the leisure
to discover that he was fully worth the discovering. She regarded him
simply as a large and rather serious young man, who, without seeming
stupid, listened rather than talked; and yet was not actually a
brilliant listener, since he only listened with an air of observing
quietly, and keeping the result of his observations to himself.
"I dare say it will suit him to be out among the Indians," she said to
her mother upon one occasion. "And I should think it would suit the
Indians. He won't find them frivolous and given up to vanity. I believe
he thinks I am frivolous. It struck me that he did the other day, when I
was talking about that new dress being made. Do you think I talk about
my clothes too much, mamma? Well, at all events," with much frankness,
"I don't talk about them half as much as I think about them. I am always
thinking about them just now. It seems as if I should die if they
weren't becoming after they were made. But don't you suppose it's
natural, mamma, and that I shall get over it in time?"
She was brushing out her hair before the glass, and turned round, brush
in hand, with an expression of rather alarmed interest, and repeated the
question.
"Don't you think I shall get over it?" she said. "It seems just now as
if everything had _begun_ all at once, and anything might happen, and I
had rather lost my breath a little in the rush of it. And I _do_ so want
to have a good time, and I care about everything connected with
it,--clothes, and people, and parties, and everything,--but I _don't_
want to be any more frivolous than I need be,--I mean I don't want to be
a stupid."
She gave the pretty red-brown mane embowering her a little shake back,
and fixed her large, clear eyes on her mother's.
"I suppose all girls are frivolous just at first," she said. "Don't
you?"
"I don't call it frivolous," said her mother, who was a simple,
excellent creature, not troubled with intellectual pangs, and who, while
she admired her, frequently found her daughter as far beyond her mild,
limited comprehension as her husband was, and she was not at all
disposed to complain thereat, either.
The one fact she was best able to grasp at this moment was that the girl
looked her best, and that the circumstance might be utilized as a hint
for the future.
"That way of wearing your hair is very becoming to you, Bertha," she
said. "I wish there was some way of managing it so as to get the same
effect."
"But I can't wear it down after I'm 'out,'" said Bertha, reflectively.
"I've got beyond that--as I suppose I shall get beyond the frivolity."
And she turned to the glass and looked at herself quite simply, and with
a soft little air of seriousness which was very bewitching.
She regarded herself in this manner for several seconds, and then began
slowly to dress her hair, plaiting it into soft thick plaits, which she
fastened closely and simply at the nape of her pretty neck.
"I believe I'll try not to be _quite_ so frivolous," she said.
Perhaps she was making an effort at the accomplishment of this desirable
end when she came down to dinner, an hour or so later. Tredennis thought
he had never seen her so lovely.
He was standing alone in the fire-light, looking doubtfully at something
he held in his hand, and she entered so quietly that he started on
becoming conscious of her presence. She wore a dress he had not seen
before,--a pale gray, soft in material and very simply made, with a
little lace kerchief knotted at her throat.
She came forward, and laid her hand on the back of a chair.
"Papa has not come in--?" she began, then stopped suddenly, with a
quick, graceful little turn of her head.
"Oh, where is the heliotrope?" she exclaimed.
For the room was full of the subtle fragrance of it.
He made a rather headlong step forward.
"It is here," he said. "I have been out, and I saw a lot of it in a
florist's window. I don't know whether it's a flower to wear--and that
sort of thing--but I always liked the odor of it. So I brought this
home."
And he held it out to her.
She took it and buried her face in it delightedly. It was a sumptuous
handful, and had been cut with unsparing lavishness. He had, in fact,
stood by and seen it done.
"Ah, I like it so!" she cried. "I do like it--it's lovely."
Then she lifted her face, hesitating a second as a new thought occurred
to her. She looked up at him with pretty uncertainty, the color rising
in her cheeks simply because she was uncertain.
"They--I don't know"--she said. "You didn't--they are not for"--
"For you," Tredennis ended for her, hurriedly. "Yes. I don't know why,
but I thought of you when I saw them. It's an idea, I suppose. They are
for you, if you'll have them."
"Ah!" she said, "it was so kind of you! I'm so glad to have them. I have
always liked them."
She almost hid her bright face in them again, while he stood and watched
her, wondering why he felt suddenly tremulous and unreasonably happy.
At last she looked up at him again.
"I wish this was my 'coming-out' night," she said. "I would wear these.
You have given me my first bouquet. I am glad of that."
"If I am here on the night of your first party," he answered, "I will
give you another, if you will let me."
"If you are here?" she said "Are you going away?"
And there was an innocent, unconsciously expressed touch of
disappointment in her tone, which was a sharp pleasure to him, though he
was in too chaotic a mental condition to call it either pleasure or
pain.
"I may be ordered away at any moment," he said.
He could never exactly remember afterward how it came about, that in a
few moments more he was sitting in the professor's arm-chair, and she
had taken a seat on a hassock near him, with some of his heliotrope in
the knot of her hair, some fastened against her pale gray dress, and
some loosely clasped in the hand which rested on her lap. He did not
know how it happened, but she was there, and the scent of the heliotrope
floated about her in the warmth of the fire, and she was talking in the
bright, fanciful way which entertained the professor, and he knew that
this brief moment he came for the first time within the charmed circle
of her girlish life and pleasures, and, though he was conscious that his
nearness moved her no more than the professor's would have done, he was
content.
There was a softness in her manner which was new to him, and which had
the effect of giving him courage. It was a result partly of the pleasure
he had given her and partly of the good resolution she had made, of
which he knew nothing. He only saw the result, and enjoyed it. She even
showed a pretty interest in his future.
"She is what the Italians call _simpatica_," had been one of her
father's observations concerning her, and Tredennis thought of it as he
listened and watched her.
It was her gift to say well all she had to say. Her simplest speech
produced its little effect, because all her heart was with her hearer.
Just now she thought only of Tredennis, and that she wished to show her
interest in him.
So she sat with her flowers upon her knee and talked, and it was an
enchanted hour for Tredennis, who felt like a creature slowly awakening
to the light of day.
"I suppose we may not see you again for several years," she said. "I do
not like to think of that, and I am sure papa won't, but"--and she
turned, smiling into his eyes, her chin resting in the hollow of her
palm, her elbow on her knee--"when we _do_ see you, of course you will
be a most distinguished person, entirely covered with stars and ribbons
and--scalps!"
"And you," he said; "I wonder what will have happened to you?"
"Oh, a great many things, of course," she answered; "but only the
unimportant things that happen to all girls--though they will be
important enough to me. I dare say I shall have had a lovely time, and
have been very happy."
And she turned her little smile upon the fire and brooded for a few
seconds--still in her pretty attitude.
It was such a pretty attitude and her look was so sweet that both
together wrought upon Tredennis strongly, and he felt himself awakening
a little more.
"I wish," he said, breaking the brief silence in a low voice,--"I wish
that _I_ could insure the--happiness for you."
She turned, with a slight start, and some vague trouble in her face.
"Oh!" she said, "don't you think I shall be sure to be happy? There
seems to be no reason why I should not. Oh, I hope I shall be happy;
I--I don't know what I should do if I wasn't happy! I can't imagine it."
"Everybody is not happy," he said, his voice almost tremulous.
"But," she faltered, "but I--I have always been happy"--She stopped, her
eyes appealing to him piteously. "I suppose, after all, that is a poor
reason," she added; "but it almost seems like one."
"I wish it were one!" he said. "Don't look like that. It--it hurts me.
If any sacrifice of mine--any suffering"--
She stirred a little, moved in some vague way by the intensity of his
tone, and as she did so the odor of the heliotrope floated toward him.
"Bertha!"--he said, "Bertha"--
He did not know what he would have said--and the words were never
spoken--for at that moment the enchanted hour was ended. It was the
professor himself who broke in upon it--the professor who opened the
door and entered, hungry and absent-minded, the fire-light striking upon
his spectacles and seeming to enlarge them tremendously as he turned his
head from side to side, inhaling the air of the room with evident
delight.
"Flowers, eh?" he said. "What kind of flowers? The air seems full of
them."
Bertha rose and went to him, Tredennis watching her girlish pale-gray
figure, as it moved across the room, with a pained and bewildered sense
of having lost something which he might never regain.
"They are heliotropes," she said; "Philip brought them to me. It is my
first bouquet, so I shall keep it until I am an old woman."
A week later, Tredennis left Washington. It so chanced that he took his
departure on the night rendered eventful by the first party. In the
excitement attendant upon the preparations for this festivity, and for
his own journey, he saw even less of Bertha than usual. When she
appeared at the table she was in such bright, high spirits that the
professor found her--for some private reason of his own--more absorbing
than ever. His spectacles followed her with an air of deep interest, he
professed an untrained anxiety concerning the dress she was to wear,
appearing to regard it as a scientific object worthy of attention.
"She's very happy!" he would say to Tredennis again and again. "She's
very happy!" And having said it he invariably rubbed his forehead
abstractedly and pushed his spectacles a trifle awry, without appearing
conscious of it.
When the carriage Tredennis had ordered came to the door, at ten
o'clock, the coupé which was to convey Bertha to the scene of her first
triumphs had just driven up.
A few seconds later Bertha turned from her mirror and took up her
bouquet of white rose-buds and heliotrope, as a servant knocked at the
door.
"The carriage is here, miss," he said; "and Mr. Tredennis is going away,
and says would you come and let him say good-by."
In a few seconds more, Tredennis, who was standing in the hall, looked
up from the carpet and saw her coming down the staircase with a little
run, her white dress a cloud about her, her eyes shining like stars, the
rose and heliotrope bouquet he had sent her in her hand.
"Thank you for it," she said, as soon as she reached him. "I shall keep
this, too; and see what I have done." And she pushed a leaf aside and
showed him a faded sprig of heliotrope hidden among the fresh flowers.
"I thought I would like to have a little piece of it among the rest,"
she said. And she gave him her hand, with a smile both soft and bright.
"And you really kept it?" he said.
"Oh, yes," she answered, simply. "You know I am going to keep it as long
as I live. I wish we could keep you. I wish you were going with us."
"I am going in a different direction," he said; "and"--suddenly, "I have
not a minute to spare. Good-by."
A little shadow fell on the brightness of her face.
"I wish there was no such word as 'good-by,'" she said.
There was a silence of a few seconds, in which her hand lay in his, and
their eyes rested on each other. Then Mrs. Herrick and the professor
appeared.
"I believe," said Tredennis, "if you are going now, I will let you set
out on your journey first. I should like to see--the last of you."
"But it isn't the last of me," said Bertha, "it is the first of me--the
very first. And my heart is beating quite fast."
And she put her hand to the side of her slender white bodice, laughing a
gay, sweet laugh, with a thrill of excitement in it. And then they went
out to the carriage, and when Mrs. Herrick had been assisted in, Bertha
stood for a moment on the pavement,--a bright, pure white figure, her
flowers in her hand, the hall light shining upon her.
"Papa!" she called to the professor, who stood on the threshold, "I
never asked you if you liked it--the dress, you know."
"Yes, child," said the professor. "Yes, child, I like--I like it."
And his voice shook a little, and he said nothing more. And then Bertha
got into the carriage and it drove away into the darkness. And almost
immediately after Tredennis found himself in his carriage, which drove
away into the darkness, too--only, as he laid his head against the
cushions and closed his eyes, he saw, just as he had seen a moment
before, a bright, pure white figure standing upon the pavement, the
night behind it, the great bouquet of white roses in its hand, and the
light from the house streaming upon the radiant girl's face.